A remarkable film - over the top, intense, moving. Perhaps Russell's masterpiece - I haven't seen all his movies but feel his over the top flamboyance perfectly matched the story.
It's a powerful true story. People get stuck into Russell for twisting and dramatising but the fact is much of what he does is truer than many Hollywood/British versions of historical stories. And I think part of the heated reaction to many about what they saw on screen was the depiction of how corrupt the Church was and how people can get whipped up into frenzies.
It's a film that retains it's power. Nuns going crazy, taking off their clothes and masturbating; priests having their heads shaved and being burnt to death.
It's very biased towards the Oliver Reed character. Russell has written about how it's a man who finds redemption but as he has it Reed's character is admirable from the get go - he's studly, bedding all these women, Gemma Jones (Bridget Jones' mother - quite saucy) falls for him, all the nuns want him, he's smart and wise and brave standing up to the troops to keep the independence of his city state. It's a fairly glamorised depiction of a priest, very heroic, even before he stands up to prosecution and is horribly tortured.
The torture scenes are full on - it's painful and mean, with the witch hunter hysterical. A priest holds up the priest's baby child to watch his father die painfully and cackles. Reed dies in great pain.
And the thing is, this sort of stuff happens in real life - happened a lot, continues to happen, and you see it resurfacing all the time.
There could've been a bit more nuance in Vanessa Redgrave's character - she starts mad and gets more mad. Jones doesn't do much but pant over Reed. However Dudley Sutton (he of the affro) and especially Michael Gothard are superb as baddies - Gothard's deranged, yelling witch hunter is fantastic.
All the acting works - everyone commits. It's an extremely effective film.
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